Land of Pale Saints
by The Hart and Hound
Summary: There’s a tentative melancholy that Ino loves in the hallways of the hospital, stuck between the line of Sakura’s frown and the plastic lighting that washes her hair out into grey. [InoSakura, for horsesandmen.]


Title: Land of Pale Saints

Author: tsubaki-hana

Series: Naruto

Rating: T

Disclaimer: Naruto belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.

Summary: There's a tentative melancholy that Ino loves in the hallways of the hospital, stuck between the line of Sakura's frown and the plastic lighting that washes her hair out into grey. (Ino/Sakura, for horsesandmen.)

* * *

i. books

* * *

Ino finds Sakura, as she always (_inevitably_) does, leaning over a pile of medical texts, refreshing herself for the surgery that will be done tomorrow with Tsunade and Shizune. Still a student under the Hokage, it is not very often that Sakura is allowed to sit in on a surgery as large as this one, and she pursues the opportunity with vigor, even if it does mean that she will not sleep well until she _understands_, until the necessary movements are hers to call on later. Her fingers are dry from flipping pages, rasping against the words with her tracing hands, her eyes are wide and glassy and for a moment in the florescent light of the hospital's library, Sakura is old.

Ino blinks, briefly, to clear the thought from her head. When she opens her eyes, Sakura is all soft and clean lines again, a stain of red against the linoleum (_it comes in a pale heather green, something that Ino will always associate with illness and blood_.) This is as it should be, she thinks with a sigh, and curses herself for her wandering imagination.

Her mind wanders, but only when she asks it to.

"You should sleep, you know," she says, for no reason other than to fill the silence. Sakura nods absently, but flips to the next page (_and here you see a man with his spinal cord ripped out, just like pulling weeds from rocks only this is peach-flesh, spine white, and blood red all over and you rather think you prefer the mud and water of grass to this_.) "You won't be in any condition to stand in on the surgery if you don't rest before it."

Sakura smiles, wanly, somewhere hidden under her slouch. "Why are you so worried about it? I figured that you would want me to mess up so that you could stand in instead." She closes the book and opens another, curt and rigid with tiredness. "I know that you wanted to help."

"You're the senior apprentice," Ino says, biting the inside of her cheek. Trust Sakura to turn a simple suggestion into a competition. "It's not like you didn't have the right to do it. But," she says slyly, "if you'd rather _I_ do it..."

"As if, Ino-pig," Sakura says with a slap of papers against the table. The irritation is rising, and Ino can read this in the way that Sakura tightens her lips and shifts her legs just so, as though something was rubbing her the wrong way. "I've worked for hours to be able to do this. Tsunade-shishou promised _me_ this surgery."

And there it is again, she thinks, that rivalry. How quickly it arises from nothing, how quickly it destroys the tenuous calm between the two of them. They are friends, but at the same time they are first and foremost competing students of the Hokage, and to Ino, there is nothing so unfair as being separated from each other through a jealousy that Ino isn't even sure that she feels anymore. (_You do, but you don't, like an old wound, grasping at once was cut but is now healed. Does the pain ever go away?_)

She's not as much of a doctor as Sakura. She wants to heal people, to see them in full health and happiness, but not the way that Sakura does. Sakura wants to take the people apart and put them back together in a way that makes sense. She wants them to work like building blocks, or like a lesson in school, to look the same as what her textbook _says_ is a person. Ino wonders (_everyone wonders_) if this might have something to do with her teammates, two people who's bodies are in order, but their minds don't quite fit together like everyone else's.

She wonders when someone will tell her that people can't be fixed like that.

"I'll get the next surgery though," she says with a smirk, knowing that it is not at all true. She may be entitled to the next surgery, but she will not take Sakura's chance to make things orderly for herself away. Unlike everyone else, she understands the need for normalcy.

* * *

ii. flights of fancy

* * *

"I swear, if you stick that syringe in my ear one more time and I am going to roundhouse kick you clear through the wall," Sakura grumbles, pushing the tray of utensils through the hallway. Ino giggles from the side, wielding a blue plastic bulb syringe like a weapon, blowing sterile air into Sakura's face. There is a smile creeping across both of their faces, despite the fronts of anger and malicious glee.

"Then I'll simply have to find somewhere else to stick it, ne?"

"Is that a threat?" Sakura laughs, batting an arm away. "Surely you have someone better to be pushing foreign objects into their orifices than me! I'd hardly be worth your efforts, pitiful bud that I am."

"I am certain that you would come to like it. Most do."

They laugh, the real kind that makes her lungs hurt and her legs weaken with amusement. Sakura snorts into her sleeve, trying to stifle her loud giggling.

Wiping her eyes, Sakura puts on her best serious face. "Then...then as your sempai, I ask that you be my first to molest me with hospital implements meant for nose washing and blood sucking," she says, grin spitting her face. Ino's own smile widens again as she watches the dimples on Sakura's face become more pronounced.

She is much more beautiful this way, Ino think fleetingly. And it must be true, because even as she watches, she sees the sparkle of mirth in Sakura's eyes and the slight show of teeth. (_They're sharp, you see, and you often wonder what they would feel like against your shoulder or your lips. You know the actual feeling of teeth, but it is hers that you wonder the most often about_.) This is the way that we should always be.

Ino squeezes the bulb syringe threateningly, and they both erupt into giggles again.

* * *

iii. stranger

* * *

They sit in the lounge gain, and Ino is pouring over her own books this time, but Sakura simply sits, her medical apron still slung around her waist and her eyes glossed over. It is unusual, since when Ino finally bothers to study, Sakura usually hangs in the wings until she can find some way to irritate her (_friend? companion?_) fellow student with her superior knowledge.

Ino doesn't ask, but waits for Sakura to say something, writing down different medical conditions of the brain into her medical notebook. Sakura is not immediately forthcoming with answers, but does eventually turn her head towards Ino, looking apologetic.

"I opened a man's abdomen today," she says, voice very small. She looks away again, seeing and not seeing.

"But I did it wrong."

* * *

iv. paradise

* * *

It is not very often that both she and Sakura have a day that they are not on duty at the hospital, and upon hearing that this would at last happen, Ino had taken Sakura by the arm and plotted out an entire day of fun activities for the two of them to do. Grumbling, but still nodding, Sakura had let Ino rattle on for a while before finally declaring in an authoritative voice that she intended to sleep, and fuck whatever new pastry store had just opened.

Ino is never hurt by declarations like this. Sakura makes them regularly, especially now that the pressure is on to complete her training within a year. She needs to be ready, but Ino can see that she is tired with pale skin and a body that just twists into the sterile walls of the hospital. While angry that Sakura will not do anything with her, she understands, and feels a matching weariness in her bones.

"Did you expect to be working so hard?" asks Shizune, who is cleaning off surgical knives with careful grace. "I know that my first years as a medic were absolutely exhausting, and you and Sakura have worked so hard to get to where you are."

Ino sighs, brushing soap suds across her forehead. "It really can't be helped. I have to catch up to Sakura, and Sakura has to keep up with Naruto and Sasuke."

Sasuke and Naruto are not mentioned when Sakura is on duty with her, because while Sakura is not offended that other people think of her teammates, Ino knows that she is upset by it. The rough hands work quicker over the homework assignments and more chakra is used than necessary, as though by forcing it out, she could make more. (_You've heard Tsunade tell her before, over and over again, that Naruto and Sasuke will always be the powerhouses, the ones with the constant flow of energy. Sakura, she point out, is better at dispensing the energy, even if Ino thinks she wastes it on two young men that are so wrapped up in each other's conflicts that they barely see in their periphery_.)

Ino struggles with this idea, because as far as she's concerned, she and Sakura have been friends longer than anyone else that has walked into Sakura's life. She doesn't understand sometimes how two boys could drive the determined young woman to such heights while she sat on the side, always waiting for her on the side. She cares about Sakura just as any other, perhaps _stronger_ as a person who had seen her at her weakest, yet somehow it doesn't mean the same thing as the caring of her teammates.

Ino will always try to keep up with Sakura. She doesn't want to fall out of Sakura's periphery either.

"Study hard," says Shizune, "sleep well. You will find that a day of good rest after a long time working is the best thing that you could ever be given. Besides, a few hours of rest would probably do wonders for you two. You're always so gloomy after shifts."

Ino, curling up into her futon that night, thinks that nothing could be more true. She is content and she is asleep within a few passing moments, letting unconsciousness carry away whatever bothers her during the morning hours.

* * *

v. oral fixation

* * *

"You know," says Ino, chewing on a dango, "it's really obnoxious how mitarashi dango always take all of your lip gloss off. Worse still, they leave all that sticky stuff behind."

"Profound thoughts over an energy drink and sweets, Ino?" asks Sakura, chewing on a ration bar with all the enthusiasm of a coma patient. "You'd save yourself a lot of moral dilemmas if you'd just stick to your work and finish your jobs early."

Ino scoffs, sucking at the mitarashi sauce. "All work and no play makes Ino a dull, dull girl. Are you saying that you never take offense at the nature of your food? Do you not find that ration bar disgusting? It's beyond me how you even manage to cram that thing into your mouth, much less actually chew and swallow."

Sakura takes a bite of the bar, scowling, but chewing all the same. Even Ino can tell that Sakura wants to spit it out, despite all of her postulating. Ino watches her swallow and wince.

Sakura smiles, eyebrows twitching down and her lips wide and dry. Ino thinks of the chap stick in her purse, watermelon flavored, that she thinks Sakura ought to use. "Never mind, you're right, it _is_ gross. But I'm not going to start philosophizing on the nature of my food. If I'm not hungry, then I'm happy."

"Hardly," Ino says with a snort. "If you were happy with that crap you eat, then you're one of the most irritable happy people that I've ever met, excluding Shikamaru. He's irritated by everything, even if he is in a good mood."

Sakura waves a hand dismissively, but leans towards the dango tray with a sigh. "Hand me one of those things. My carbs and calories are entirely too low anyway, and it's not like I'm going to get fat like you, Ino-pig."

Ino growls, but slides it to her anyway. "Happy Fattening Up, forehead girl."

* * *

vi. narcissism

* * *

Ino always chooses to think that she looks good. Really, the alternatives aren't very nice, and for all intents and purposes, she _does_ look good with her pale ash hair and bright eyes. She is a kind of beauty that is few and far between in this land of work-tanned skin and rough nails and she likes for other people the acknowledge it.

She has a routine to keep herself soft and lovely, a constant chemical battle of oils and scents that she somehow thinks will make her hair more lustrous or her skin less dry. Ino has kept it the same since she first began, a mere twelve-years-old and madly in love with an ideal that doesn't really exist. (_Grow your hair out long, and you will find love, you will find happiness, and how very gullible you are to believe this._) Three years later, her hands make the same motions, but it is no longer with the enthusiasm that she once had. Now she simply does it because it is comfortable, not because she feels that honeysuckle would smell better than bellflower on a Tuesday.

It isn't that she is vain, not in the way that people assume that she is. She doesn't go forward, trying to find people to marvel and compliment her looks. She knows she is beautiful and that is quite enough for her. What it is that she does is keep herself in the forefront of other people's minds.

She'll be the first to admit that as a kunoichi, she isn't stellar the way that Tsunade and Shizune are. She is happy to be a medical ninja and she doesn't particularly cry out for the blood, sweat, and tears that most ninja seem to strive for. It's messy, she thinks, it's messy and ugly and everything that I don't want to be. Her genin team is fun-loving and good natured, and they all know perfectly well that they will never be another Team 7 or sannin, and they are perfectly fine with that. (_Who would want to be anyway, when all that fame and power can promise is broken ceramic hopes, just as brittle and very sharp against tender hearts?_)

Sakura is beautiful, but it is in the way that dusty dolls and autumn flowers are. She smells of the memory of vanity, covered over in silt and age that Ino can almost see in the form of frowns and worries that weren't there just a year before. (_They are etched in with chisels, -cutting- and deepening the cracks with merciless neutrality._) It is in the hallways of the hospital where this is most recognizable, spelt out in steel tools and monochrome walls.

"We're going to never be done cleaning these," Sakura says, leaning over a tray of saws and knives (_and you both try not to think of what's on them_) with her cloth and bowl of water, her mouth twisted into a thoughtful frown. Next to her, Ino sits cross-legged and patiently winding up yards of cloth bandages. Between the metal and the white cloth, they both succumb to something like blindness, snow blindness like Ino recalls from the mountains in the north (_you went with your father and your friends when you were seven, remember? You scraped your leg on a rock and cried into the frost until someone could see you and save you._)

Sakura's hair is a halo about her, and with her fingers twined up in the cloth, Ino is glad that she cannot reach out, cannot try to brush the dust that she can imagine covers Sakura's head. There is a tentative melancholy in the hallways of the hospital, stuck between the line of Sakura's frown and the plastic lighting that washes her hair out into grey.

"Damn, this will never come clean," says Sakura, listening to the dirty water fall between her fingers in tinged pink streams. Ino stains her bandages, trying to clean Sakura's hands off.

* * *

vii. damned if you do, damned if you don't

* * *

She has a hard time feeling bad about spending their night out drinking, going into the bathroom to vomit every so often, because no matter how shitty Ino and Sakura know they will feel in the morning, it feels so good now. There is so little instant gratification in their line of work, and even if they would rather be sleeping, there is a promise of good times instead of bad dreams.

Underage is just a term adults use to try and put limits on children, but Ino's fought enough people and killed her first man. She feels she is old enough to drink. Sakura has felt more sorrows than most people feel before halfway through their life. Sakura does not think that she is old enough to drink, but does it anyway.

"We'll feel like hell in the morning," says Ino, perhaps a bit too loudly in the silence of the flower shop's lobby. Her father may not be at home (_and your brothers are dead, let's not forget that even if you are smashed_) but the clash of her voice against the potted plants and the cooler doors makes her feel like she is intruding.

"Good," says Sakura, "maybe we won't be filled with the burning desire to act like idiots again." She stumbles through the door way, pulling constantly at the fabric of her shirt, as though not entirely certain that it is still there.

Ino has an even harder time feeling bad when she puts her hand on Sakura's waist to steady her, but instead can only think of how smooth the flesh of her hip is, how hard the bone is beneath her hand and would it hurt if she were to -squeeze- just a little harder (_a death grip, because you are afraid to let go, to let this moment pass and you don't know why, especially when you can feel your head pounding and your very bones ache with tiredness, but please, -__**please**__- let her stay with you_).

"Ino?"

Sakura's voice is a chime in her head, and she lets her hand fall away, pulling her hands behind her head and her mouth into a grin. "We should get cleaned up, ne? Only Tsunade-shishou is allowed to come into work hung over on a Wednesday."

Sakura nods, slowly, and stumbles her way upstairs to where the only bathroom in the house is. "I suppose you're right, Ino-pig, but I'm going to need help."

"Do you want me to hold your hand while you relieve yourself?" asks Ino, voice thick with amusement.

Sakura snorts. "Of course not! I may be drunk, but I am not wholly without inhibitions. Only Kiba gets so shit-faced that h doesn't care what he does. I need some help in the shower. I'm not steady on my feet and I don't want to fall and wake up naked on your bathroom floor."

"Hmm, sounds like a week ago."

"Exactly," says Sakura, waving Ino towards her.

When Sakura finally gets into the shower, Ino sits on the sink counter, counting floor tiles and dust bunnies that are left over from drying her laundry on the shower rod. The sound of water hitting the curtain fluctuates, but Ino pays it little heed. Her stomach is quivering in her body, wrenching itself against the bottom of her rib cage and leaving her with a poor taste in her mouth.

The water steadily pours, and for a moment, Ino finds herself worried that Sakura has fallen asleep in the white noise of the bathroom. "You haven't drowned in there, have you, forehead girl? I'd really hate to do emergency respiration on a drunk girl. I'm sure your breath is terrible."

There is a mumbled reply, but Ino does not hear it over the rushing water. Again the bathroom falls into an awkward silence, and Ino is left to tap her fingers on the faucet, playing cheap aluminum fixtures like instruments. With the water, it sounds like a thunderstorm inside of her house.

"You know, you really can plow through plum wine. You might as well drink the sake and rum with the rest of us. You'd probably drink the same amount of alcohol. Can you imagine the look on Shizune's face if we told her that we drank like any adult did? She'd probably pass out from shock. Tsunade-shishou would just punch us in the face."

"We shouldn't drink."

Ino looks up from the floor tiles to see Sakura standing on the floor mat, dripping wet and barely covered with a green towel, paler and older than Sakura's eyes. The haze of drunkenness is almost passed away from her face, but her eyes are red, redder than they ought to be.

"It doesn't make either one of us happier in the long run," says Sakura, bunching fibers of the mat between her toes, avoiding looking up and into anyone's eyes. "Don't you think that we should be trying to be stronger, not weaker with toxins and cosmetics? They certainly make me feel older, but never more accomplished."

Ino smiles, bitterly. She thinks again of Sakura and her own feelings uselessness next to the titanic power of their classmates, like somehow being female and without the genius of a prodigy made them lesser beings. (_Neji is the brilliant slave, doomed to serve and never conquer, Sasuke is the tragic knight, torn from his castle and queen, and Naruto is the bold hero, always strong enough to make a difference but never quite enough to win_.) "That's why it's called pissing the night away."

Sakura also smiles, but it is vacant of any feelings at all. Ino grabs her hand and counts the lines in her palm, as if she could read them and find the answer to what it is that Sakura did wrong, that she did wrong. But she kisses Sakura's knuckles instead.

They are enough for each other, and she wants Sakura to know that.

* * *

vii. grapes

* * *

It's five in the morning, and she and Sakura are again in the bathroom, but this time for a wholly different reason. Ino finds it amazing that there are so many different kinds of medical jutsu in the world, but not a single one of them that the two of them know that would take care of a hangover.

"I am never drinking again as long as I live," says Sakura, shuddering and sputtering as she leans over the toilet, fingers clenching to the porcelain as though it were the only anchor in the world. Ino nods, feels her head pound, and pulls back Sakura's hair. Sakura vomits for the second time in the past ten minutes, wincing.

"I might join you on that," says Ino, tasting the bitterness in her mouth, the taste of dead grapes and rancid grain, the burn of bile in her throat. There's absolutely nothing appealing about the morning after (_especially the fact that you regret everything_), and Ino 's not sure how many morning afters she is ready for just yet.

All the same, Ino smiles at their impromptu vow.

She knows that it is a lie. As long as there are voids inside them, voids in the shape of feelings and people, (_aspirations, dreams, by how they build up in a big pile of never have beens and never wills_) there will never be a time that they do not try to fill it with something, and alcohol is just convenient enough to last for a few hours.

Sakura's neck is warm against her frigid hands.

* * *

ix. time to spare

* * *

"I'm really getting sick of all of these reports Tsunade-shishou is having us do on circulatory systems. If I'm not a fucking expert on them by now, then I may as well throw in the towel as a medic because I don't see any difference between this report and the last one."

Sakura smiles at her from across the table, and Ino is slightly amused to see her study partner flip through pages of her text books a little more rapidly. Irritation, she assumes, because the crease of Sakura's brow speaks volumes that the girl would never speak aloud for fear of offending her teacher. Ino has no such inhibitions, and is not afraid to voice them. Tsunade just shakes her head and grins in a motherly way.

"Do you even have time for this, Sakura? I was under the impression that sensei was keeping you working at full tilt with training in medical jutsu and physical strength. It seems a little silly to assign you papers that you probably have already figured out and don't have the time to spare to write."

Sakura flips through the pages, writes a little side note, and sits up straight. The smile on her face is warm, in the way that her hands are not, and in the way that her eyes would be if she weren't so tired all of the time.

"Running out of steam, are you? Don't tell me that you're too weak to do this too, Ino-pig. I would be sorely disappointed in you," Sakura says, chuckling into the textbook. Ino stiffens, blows her cheeks out for a fight, and sighs in restraint.

"You sure do know how to piss me off. I was just worried about your health is all."

"I know, but I have time."

Ino blinks, pushes her bottom lip out, and let's her brows drop down. "To what? Irritate the hell out of me? Insult me ritually? Lord your superior medic skills over me like a frickin' florescent orange flag?"

Sakura laughs, but does not rile up the way that Ino expects in situations like this. Instead she frowns a little before putting a pen up to her mouth, tentatively chewing on it. "I don't get much time to spend with people with all of my training, but at least when I do the reports and research for papers, I get to see you. I always have time to spend with you, Ino."

Ino smiles, and feels saline in her eyes, but instead laughs boisterously and punches Sakura's shoulder. "And I always have time to spend with you. Besides, I have to keep up with your progress so that I'll know when you're strong enough to make an opponent worthy of my time." It's not what she wants to say, but they know what she means, and sometimes the one comedy act is half of the show. There has to be humor somewhere. (_There's not enough of it everyday to make you feel completed anyway._)

* * *

x. reflection

* * *

It used to be that when Ino looked into the mirror, she saw a pretty girl with pale skin and hair, soft eyes, and a severe expression from the anger she felt. (_You had been betrayed, by the one friend that you had that was not like family, someone that you didn't feel was like spending time with your older brothers or family friends. You had let childhood romance run train tracks between you, and there never seemed to be a chance to cross them._)

The mirror was a way to look at herself without having to ever actually look at anything that made her what she was. It was all visual, and she always pretended that she couldn't see the hurt residing just behind her eyes. She was lively, she was full of energy, and she needed to burn it off in an emotion so petty as envy.

But now that she has started training again, separate of her usual friends and in a branch that she enjoys, she sees a pretty girl with paling skin and lackluster hair from just coming in from a shift at the hospital. Comparatively, she feels quite dirty next to the fragile beauty of the magnolia blossoms in the dish beside her, and her eyes are always tired from not sleeping enough.

Unlike back then, however, she does not mind this as much as she thinks she would have, not when there is the occasional promise of looking in the mirror and finding Sakura standing beside her in the reflection, come to sleep off her shift with Ino because it's too noisy in her own home. Ino smiles, and likes the idea of seeing Sakura outside of the grey halo of the hospital and the shadowed cloak of bars and midnight bathroom expeditions. Even outside of her ward of saints and doctors, Sakura is just as lovely as ever, and no is not as jealous as she once might have been.

"You're not going to hog the blankets this time, are you? Your house is always so damn cold."

Ino drops her knapsack filled with homework and throws a chenille pillow with mock anger. Sakura throws it back with mock indignation. It's just the way the two of them work together.

* * *

A/N: Well, I've finally finished it. I hope it was worth the wait, Mai.

Constructive criticism and reviews are always welcome!


End file.
